Sunday, November 30, 2014

Advent

This
past week (like lots of other Americans), I flew across the country to celebrate the
Thanksgiving holiday with my family. Of course, one could – and should - give
thanks at any and all times of the year. And we do, in fact, do that every time we
celebrate Mass. (The word itself, Eucharist,
literally means giving thanks!) But autumn,
the season of the harvest, naturally lends itself to such sentiments, at least wherever the natural seasons still exercise some influence on our technologized contemporary lives. Certainly since
ancient times, throughout the northern hemisphere, thanksgiving festivals have
been celebrated at this season. And our own uniquely American Thanksgiving
holiday dates back to at least 1623.

Autumn
– late autumn, autumn turning into winter – also gives this happy holiday season
a somewhat solemn and reflective mood, a mood that the Church’s annual cycle
captures so singularly in this season of Advent, which in the Latin Rite begins
today (unless you happen to live in Milan, Italy, where the ancient Ambrosian
Rite is followed, and where Advent already began 2 weeks ago).

Advent
originated as an annual period of repentance focused on preparation for
Judgment Day, and this Sunday, rather than starting something completely new, continues
the end-of-time, Judgment Day themes of the last several Sundays, summing them
all up in the warning: “Be watchful! Be
alert!” Like the servants in today’s
Gospel [Mark
13:33-37], we have been
left with a mission, each with his or her own work, while we wait for the lord of the house to return.

Meanwhile,
of course, there are many distractions that get in the way of our being
attentive – or, as Jesus says, being on
the watch. What are some of those distractions? “The great danger in
today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism,” Pope Francis has written, “is
the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the
feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our
interior life gets caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no
longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard,
the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.”
[Evangelii Gaudium 2]

So,
Jesus said to his disciples, “Be
watchful! Be alert!” Be on guard against whatever distractions dull our
senses and lull us into sleeping!

In
the darkness of the winter night, when sleeping
seems so natural, Advent yanks us out of our ordinary, secular time into what
we might call liturgical time. Like
Thanksgiving in secular time, Advent introduces us to Christmas in liturgical
time, remembering Christ’s 1st coming in the past. “The joy of
evangelizing,” Pope Francis reminds us, “always arises from grateful
remembrance” [Evangelii Gaudium 13]. And so Advent introduces us to Christmas in liturgical
time, looking back to Christ’s 1st coming in the past so as to
recognize Christ’s continuing presence in the present – in the here and now,
between Christmas and the end - until Christ’s final coming, when (as we say in
the Creed) he will come to judge the
living and the dead.

The
older I get, the more I have come to appreciate how much sense Advent makes.
The older one gets, the more aware you become that time is running out, and
thus the more you appreciate the importance of the present, the time you
actually have. Time – this time, our
time – is precious, precisely because it is limited, but also (and here is the
Christian spin on what is an otherwise universal human experience) because it
has a future. Advent annually expresses in ritual form for us what we actually
presently experience, where we actually find ourselves right now, living and
waiting between Christ’s 1st coming at Christmas and his final
coming for which we claim as Christians to be waiting, as we say at every Mass,
in joyful hope.

So
Advent is not some antiquated interlude on the way to Christmas. Much less is
it some artificial exercise in make-believe, trying to compete (as if one could
complete) with the joyful Christmas season in which we already find ourselves. As
I say every year at this time, the liturgy isn’t a play. We’re not reenacting
God’s entry into our world a long time ago, or pretending that Jesus hasn’t already
been born, but will instead somehow surprise us on Christmas morning - as if Jesus were Santa
Claus.

So
the point of Advent is not – as some would have it – to delay our celebration
of Christmas, but rather to refine our experience of Christmas.

The
point of Advent is to make the anniversary of Christ’s 1st coming
concentrate our attention on his presence and action in our world in the
present. That present has plenty of problems, as we all know and all have
experienced in different and challenging ways. As Isaiah laments in today’s 1streading [Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2b-7]: we
have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind.
The challenge of Advent is to re-imagine Christmas as more than just shopping
and presents and parties (however wonderful those things may be in themselves).
The challenge of Advent is to recognize in the reality of the Christmas story
something even more wonderful than shopping and presents and parties, to
recognize something really new and wonderful, pointing us hopefully into the
future, by the bright light of Christmas past. As Saint Paul assures us in
today’s 2nd reading [1
Corinthians 1:3-9]: God is
faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord.

Homily, for the First Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN,

About Me

Rev. Ronald Franco, CSP, is a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle (The Paulist Fathers) and Vice-Postulator for the Canonization Cause of Paulist Founder, Isaac Hecker. He is Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN,